catharsis
by repurposer
Summary: fukawa touko is eighteen when she relearns the word 'love'. —fukawa-centric ; toukomaru [one-shot / dr:ae spoilers]


a/n: [ cross-posted from ao3 ] i wrote this in an attempt to break out of writer's block. the chronological order and translations of some dr:ae scenes in this fic may differ since i'm mostly basing it off memory.

mirror i wanted to give you something happy so this isn't really my gift but i hope you like this anyway, if you're reading;; i'm writing you a much fluffier present for christmas don't worry

enjoy!

* * *

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fukawa touko falls in love not with people, but with parts of them—the first being the gentle lilt of a boy in elementary school, prepubescent and rough around the edges but melting into something she'd like to think is special when they're alone. the lilt that thrums in her mind as she translates her affections into ink on paper; the lilt that hardened and sharpened as he snaps _yes, that was me, i pinned your stupid love letter to the board, no i was never in love with you, you're annoying, goodbye_ and she's not sure if the crackling she hears next is the line going dead between her slack fingers or the sound of the first splinter to spear her heart.

(a month later, she awakens to rusty red staining her nails and a sear in her thigh.)

.

several years later, she falls again. he has nice hands, calloused but smooth in their own weatherbeaten way, she thinks as he runs a hand carelessly through his dishevelled hair and thumbs a number into her phone with another. she spends three days and three nights indulging in the prospect of lacing her fingers through his, clinging to the saccharine fantasies of small against large and soft against hard and safety and protection and love and letting it all envelop her, engulf her, drown her in its tingling warmth. and she spends three hours alone in the last row of the theatre freezing, frigid fingers enclosing and shredding her heart under the blanket of darkness she so hates.

(the fingers of summer daze trail into autumn, then slither into winter, golden leaves shrivelling for snowflakes to bloom. _she_ makes sure his body is as cold as her heart when she lifts the scissors and plunges with a cackle.)

.

she falls in love with many more fragments—toned arms, lanky limbs, quirked eyebrow, shiny teeth—jagged shards she could never piece together to form a whole. perhaps it is a fascination with how reality reduces humans to fractions, or perhaps it is a fear of the wholesome simplicity and lack of complication in integers. (she's never liked numbers the way she loves words.)

it doesn't matter who she falls for. the edges cut when she reaches for them. syo wipes the slate clean after and the cycle repeats again and again.

togami byakuya seems like everything she could ever want, but in the end he, too, is a fraction. he slips through the cracks in her fingers, a bitter reminder that so is she.

* * *

fukawa touko goes hand in hand with endless rumination, a cultivated persecution complex, and a heart bereft of trust. her second occupation's a murderer, the only kiss she's ever gotten was from gravel on her skin and it's no wonder no one will ever love her, really, she thinks wryly as she dips her pen, allowing the abyss within to spill over the pages and swallow reality with delusion.

* * *

words have the power to contour and define, some more so than others. fukawa touko's longest love has been of words, of arbitrary letters and the _freedom_ to shuffle and combine she finds within the overarching confines of language. the power to create, to manipulate, to draw profound meaning from a splatter of ink—this is the only skill a super high school level literary prodigy like herself can take pride in.

**| love** [noun.] :: _a tender, passionate affection for another; a feeling of warm personal attachment_

she hears this word when she is five, and has been desperate to feel it since.

**| betray** [verb _with obj._] :: _to be unfaithful in guarding, maintaining, or fulfilling; to disappoint the hopes or expectations of; to deceive, misguide, or corrupt_

she learns this word when she is ten, and it drains the colour from her world till all she's left with is black and white and their in-betweens staring back at her from every corner.

**| despair** [noun.] :: _the complete loss or absence of hope_

she truly learns the meaning of is this word when she is a seventeen-year-old believing she is fifteen, and the world crashes and crumbles around her ears, ringing with the laugh of enoshima junko.

* * *

she relearns the word _love_ when she is eighteen.

* * *

she relearns it amidst gunfire deluges and raining debris licked by tongues of fire. the air in towa hangs heavy from all the lungs crushed, the buildings are painted all the shades of monochrome and the streets are choking with death and despair.

byakuya-sama is gone. in his absence, she learns to sharpen her tongue and tip it with more acid, more vitriol. syo's presence proves useful in handling the onslaught of monokuma. _hers_ and—she grudgingly admits—komaru's.

naegi _omaru_ is a simpleton at worst and earnest at best. it's strange how someone so immensely ordinary could be so difficult to define within clear lines; though she's the most simpleminded and straightforward person touko has ever met, she finds herself struggling to place an adjective to her name. she has horrendous taste in reading (touko shudders to think anyone could be an avid fanatic of _manga_), is the textbook definition of a wimp, and bears a striking resemblance to naegi makoto, whom she more or less poured her heart out to back behind the academy's bars. that isn't awkward. not at all.

so why on earth she decided to stay with her, even temporarily, touko isn't sure.

.

(komaru's fingers close over hers on the run from the monokuma, and she doesn't give it a thought until much later, when she recalls how warm and natural and _right_ her palm feels against hers. she attributes this to cold-turkey withdrawal from byakuya-sama)

.

(it happens again when she hoists her up the obstacle she's trying to cross. komaru's hands aren't soft, they're scratched all over, trembling to corroborate the fear woven into her ash-grey—no, green, grey-green, the same as makoto's—eyes. but she helps touko up anyway, and though touko's hands instantly slip back to her sides, her skin tingles from the contact for hours afterward.) was she always this starved for companionship?

.

komaru says _she_ is.

"i've been all alone since i was confined," she confesses. the overhanging skies are dyed an ominous red, a reflection of the blood-streaked concrete screaming of danger. somewhere down the street, a robot drags its claws across metal; somewhere nearer, there is a smattering of heavy lumbering footsteps, a gurgle of a newly formed stream. darkness looms amid rust and smoke. this is the tattered state of the world, with every shadow, every corner haunted by encroaching despair.

this is no time for verbose discussion, but touko doesn't rush her. she listens.

"i've been alone, so... i've never had anyone to rely on." she pauses—then to her shock, the corners of her lips tilt up in a smile. a real, genuine, honest smile. it's not blinding, it's not stunning, but in this dimly lit cesspool it's a flash of beauty. no one has ever directed a smile so full of _warmth_ at her before.

"that's why i'm really happy to be together with you, fukawa-san! i'm really, truly happy!"

komaru flings her arms around her neck before she can protest or comprehend those words, and touko suddenly finds it hard to breathe.

(when she draws back, there's an indecipherable feeling of lightness in her ribcage)

.

sometime after, touko starts referring to her and komaru with _we._ it's surprisingly easy to treat themselves as two parts of a whole rather than keep everything a separate komaru_ and _touko, touko_ and _komaru.

_we_ is a simple word composed of only two letters, but it's steeped in meaning when she uses it. fukawa touko is cynical and abrasive and she hasn't really been included in anything for as long as she can remember (not even the future foundation; she's still bitter about that fact), but naegi komaru doesn't regard her as an interloper. she seems to welcome her with open arms, and for the first time in touko's life it's not for an ulterior motive.

_idiot_, she thinks, but it's not without the slightest hint of fondness.

.

the world is decaying, flaking off at the ends, and all touko can do is wonder why they have to share a bed in the first place.

komaru has stolen the sheets and is snoring with fervour, pressed up against her back too close for comfort, and it's all her goddamn fault her heartbeat is going into overdrive. she supposes she can't complain, though; it's much, much easier to fend off the darkness with someone by her side. komaru radiates warmth even in the depths of slumber and curled up against her, against the world, touko decides she wouldn't trade this moment for anything.

.

it comes to an end, just like everything else, but there's no sense of finality to it. touko doesn't find herself particularly repulsed by the idea of becoming acclimatised to komaru's presence. they'll be together for a rather long time, after all.

.

"um, fukawa-san..."

she's breathing hard. komaru's just looking at her, mouth slightly agape, probably wishing she never brought up the subject. something unpleasant and insidious is welling up in her chest. her eyes are dry (she's beyond crying), but it's _there_—the beginnings of a storm, a fight, simmering in her lungs beneath her clenched throat.

what were they talking about again? oh right. syo, and her family. wonderful topics.

"well, thanks for dragging out that story. i bet you want to change the subject now," she snarls. "why don't you tell a story to go with my complaints about my shitty life?" her words are acerbic; that's where she's always channelled her feelings into.

"no, what i meant to say is..." komaru frowns.

she's not sure what she sees when her gaze flits to komaru's eyes. it's definitely not pity or sympathy, at least; touko resents pity. it's utterly useless, weak and does nothing to alleviate the pitied party's suffering. it's not pity, but she tenses anyway, because she can't quite identify what it is—

"what i want to say is... i like you, fukawa-san."

silence.

touko thinks she might have a seizure.

"h-h-huh?" her tongue fumbles over the syllable, and she swallows only to find her mouth dry. "w-what are you saying all of a sudden?"

"ah, um. what?" komaru has evidently caught on to the implications of her wording, and her cheeks flush a violent shade of pink. "i—i meant to say something somewhat different from that, but..." the crimson creeps down to her neck. "no, but, um, i do love you as a friend, fukawa-san. really."

"you're making me feel all weird inside," she's muttering before she realises. "and i just thought we could grouse about our bad luck together."

for all the expanse of her vocabulary, the intimate heart-to-hearts of her romance novels, touko would never in a million years be able to accurately encompass the sheer vastness of that moment in words. her heart ricocheting off the walls of her ribcage, the storm in her lungs dissipating when the line left komaru's lips, the spasmodic throb that follows in the deafening silence afterward—and the way komaru's eyes shine in the darkness, just a little, and the way she's forced to turn away, the way her own face is suffused with blood but not in the morbid way she's learnt by rote—touko has never, _ever_ felt this way before.

and it's not unpleasant, she finds.

.

"_komaru!_" is wrenched from her throat as the monokuma attack. not _omaru_ anymore, or any other taunting or insulting variations she constructed as part of the armour shielding her heart. she discards it all, and her voice doesn't sound like hers as she screams _what are you doing to komaru_ over and over, over the influx of despair.

(_ah_. realisation strikes with a thud. she doesn't want to lose her. not after everything they've been through.

_i don't want to lose komaru. ever._

it's astounding how the world changes with your perspective.)

.

.

.

fukawa touko falls in love not with people, but with parts of them.

("we're in this together; don't ever forget that.")

she falls for the warmth of her hand, and the brightness of her smile.

("when you can't hold out on your own, i'll help you—")

she falls for her straightforward innocence; how uncomplex and yet _complete_ she is.

("—and when i can't make it by myself, you'll help me—")

she falls for the way she stays by her side despite how irritable and intolerable she is, the way she grabs her hand and hugs her and makes the monochrome world explode with colour when it's most uncalled for, the way she's still hanging on and striving to succeed and survive in spite of her initial claims that she'd die immediately.

("—persevering as a pair... that's what makes being together worthwhile, isn't it?")

she falls for fragments, fractions, but they add up into a whole—and it's everything.

(touko is stroking komaru's hair gently, carefully, letting her fingers splay across the brown strands as her other hand comes up to pull her closer. komaru drives her face into touko's shoulder, drenching the uniform with tears, her fragile frame shaking with blubbering sobs—and touko simply waits, waits for the sobs to dissolve and for the sun to emerge from behind the stormclouds.

komaru takes a long, shuddering breath and looks up.

this time, their gazes linger.)

.

_together_ is not a word either of them is familiar with, but it soon becomes touko's favourite.

* * *

touko doesn't regret parting with byakuya to stay behind in towa city with her, not for the most infinitesimal of moments.

.

there are times when she's afraid it's all just another delusion of hers, when she jerks awake gasping and slick with cold sweat, expecting to be greeted by the peeling walls of her bedroom (which had always been more of a confinement than a respite). maybe she's still fifteen years old, clutching an acceptance letter from hope's peak. maybe she's still seventeen and finding herself imprisoned once again, this time within the academy. maybe she's still ten, clawing and screaming at the dust-coated door of the locked closet as the musky darkness envelops her, engulfs her, drowns her in its unforgiving winters, and hope slips further from her grasp with each ticking second.

but it's real. komaru is real, and so is the sunlight streaking through the window of a dilapidated building they're residing in, and the arm looped around her shoulders, and the gentle reassurances resting snugly between her lips and tongue that sound like gold because komaru said them.

and this, too, is real—the fact that when she reaches out for her, she doesn't burn, or bleed, or hurt. she doesn't bleed onto the pages of her notebook, breathing life into a fresh story born from the starved fantasies of her mind. this is the first time.

(she longs to define what she feels for komaru with words, the only way she knows how. she rakes her mind to piece together appropriate words to break the silence, to unspool the feelings that have been coiled up within for so long. for all the literary accolades she's amassed, it's so awkward and strange to express herself aloud—)

.

then one day komaru beats her to it, says "i love you, touko-chan" with the smile she loves, the smile that doesn't light up the world like she described in a novel eras ago but is warm and reserved just for touko and that's enough. she doesn't need any superfluous flowery words for this, she finds; it comes easily, almost naturally, to simply say what she's been dying to on the tip of her tongue. simple and straightforward and succinct, just the way komaru is.

"we definitely need to do something about the nose-bumping," komaru mumbles as their first kiss attempt ends in failure.

touko throws her head back and laughs, truly laughs for the first time in a long while. komaru pouts and draws her in for another go.

.

flowers don't bloom in carnage, but it doesn't stop them from trying.

* * *

fukawa touko is eighteen when she relearns the word _love_, and she falls in love not with people, but with naegi komaru and naegi komaru only.

she's never really believed in forever, but this is only the beginning, she knows. winding their fingers together, she leans forward, resting her forehead against her partner's; forward into the countless days and nights stretching out ahead of them, and she's never felt lighter.


End file.
